As millions across the country prepared for their annual Thanksgiving feast, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) was busy taking shots at Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) over food safety, claiming in a letter from a Reid spokesman that Coburn, a physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies, doesn’t care if children get sick.

Coburn is offering amendments to, and opposing the current form of, Senate Bill 510, the so-called “Food Safety Modernization Act.”

According to Coburn’s camp, this bill, which could come to a vote as early as next week and which is being heavily pushed by Reid and the lame-duck congress, would do nothing to alleviate the few problems there are with food safety in the United States. The U.S. has less than 34 cases of food-borne illness per 100,000 people, and the bill would simply add burdensome regulations and give federal bureaucrats TSA-like authority to do whatever they felt was necessary to “secure the food chain” with little recourse for consumers or producers.

Coburn says the legislation would merely add hundreds of pages of new regulations and more than a billion dollars in spending without doing anything to improve what is already the safest food supply in the world.

In the letter, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said:

In Senator Coburn’s world, children who get sick and even die from eating unsafe food are less important than petty political posturing — and instead of standing up for these kids, Senate Republicans have rewarded Senator Coburn by electing him part of their leadership.

Coburn communications director John Hart said the accusations were ridiculous.

“I think it’s hard to argue that someone who’s been a practicing physician doesn’t take children’s health seriously,” Hart said. “It’s disappointing that some in Congress don’t want to debate substantive legislation and have to resort to personal attacks.”

Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control, no more than three-thousandths of one percent of food-borne illnesses are fatal in the United States.

In an address to the Senate on the amendments he is offering to the bill, Coburn noted the safety of the food supply in the U.S. as well:

We could spend $100 billion additionally every year and not make food absolutely safe. There are diminishing returns to the dollars we spend. But if you look at what the case is: In 1996, for every 100,000 people in this country, we had 51.2 cases of food-borne illness — the best in the world, by far. Nobody comes close to us in terms of the safety of our food . But, in 2009, we only had 34.8 cases — three times better than anybody else in the world. So the question has to be asked: Why are we doing this now when, in fact, we are on a trendline to markedly decrease it? The second question that should be asked is: No matter how much money we spend, is there a diminishing return?

Indeed, the legislation as currently extant would force small farmers who sell more than $500,000 worth of produce a year to meet the same regulations as larger factory farms. This category would, for instance, include Amish cooperatives which mostly sell at farmers’ markets and to restaurants.

According to Hart, the proposed legislation would cost $1.4 billion, a number backed up by the CBO.

Most worrisome is the fact the bill as it currently is written would give the FDA the authority to require mandatory recalls of tainted food.

At first blush this seems reasonable, but the current system of voluntary recalls already resulted in a $100 million loss to tomato growers in the U.S. when a salmonella outbreak caused the FDA to recommend a recall. It turned out the problem was not tomatoes but jalapeno peppers, but by the time the real culprit was discovered the damage was already done.

Hart points out that bureaucrats with the power to order recalls would be very likely to jump the gun and order a huge recall before all the facts are in. Worse, it would precipitate a fight between the industry and regulators, who currently have a fairly good working relationship.

Well, there is the “promote the general welfare” . Now that does not mean dictate every issue. But it probably does allow the feds to require a label on all foods irrigated with raw sewage. Then You can decide to buy and eat, as is your right under the “pursuit of happiness”.

Anyways that is how I see a benevolent government balanced with maximum freedom.

I’ve had a lifetime of agricultural experience and education before and after 30 years of military service. Often, I have, over the past 30 years, been involved in the areas of animal health and nutrition platforms.

Though a native “Okie” I believe that Senator Coburn misses the mark in defense of of position. Data has long supported that food borne illness is overwhelming a result in the second and third echelons of food utilization; food processors and the end-user.

Food processors are extremely regulated already and as an unintended consequence of much of that regulation, data is supportive that overly processed foods contribute to a lowered imune system to, illness and disease. Furthermore, and even more significant, processed foods dimisnish the [natural] nutrient values of the foods thus, rendering them less nutritous even with added sythetic restoration processes…which is a consistent matter of scientific discussion over their value and metabolic utilization. In other words, data will support that most processed foods do NOT make us healthier and we are robbed of their natural nutrient values….safer in the abstract due to handling and holding processes…maybe!

So, this would have been an opportune time for Mr. Coburn to paint the bills supporters as rather irrelevant…along with the bill itself. Agriculture is one of the most extremely over regulated backbone industries in America. Most of the regulation does only one of two things…1) Create a manipulated market requiring the government to subsidize and 2) raise the price of foodstuffs.

This old sod-buster, cow-puncher says enough government regulating agriculture in the name of bogus food safety claims!

Welcome to the post “we get it” legislative behavior change. These congressmen will use these types of bills to put their little ear marks and build up their so called creds with voters. If they did get it, they would do nothing. We want and need right now a Calvin Coolidge government. the last thing we need is MORE regulation and bureacrats in our lives. This particular bill once again increases FED control of our lives. Now our food is subject to further controls just as our health is now part of their nanny state agenda. Oh and as the liar scum bag Harry Reid wants us to believe “its all about the children”. Apparently this fool has learned nothing and proven he is incapable of learning anything. What a pathetic bill. Also Chambliss and Isakson, we have our eyes on you too!

Well of course increased taxes along with inflation and increased food prices as well as food shortages due to recalls on all sorts of foods by unknowing bureaucrats. It is a bad idea from the party of really bad and insane ideas!

We do not need any more government beaucracy. The irresponsible legislators give no thought to the cost of administration of the programs they dream up. I think it’s because they don’t do well in math. This kind of legislation tells me that it’s time to eliminate government as it presently exists, and start over from scratch.

Reading this article makes you wonder what planet the Senate (and H of R, and the Federal bureaucracy) are actually on. Do they not realize that we have a fiscal crisis? That we are borrowing 40%+ of the Federal budget now, that without cuts we are headed to catastrophe?
No wonder people are angry.

This monstrous bill was never meant to provide safer food, it is designed for CONTROL. The Obama Administration that, is all Hell Bent to control ever aspect of our lives, wants to establish a way that small farmers and back yard gardeners will have to give account of ever piece of food, like Animals, Eggs, Tomatoes, Carrots, Cucumbers, etc we produce.
If the government can ontrol ever morsel of food produced, it has control of who gets that food (and doesn’t seem to want the people who produce it to partake of it. The Obama “One World Government” intends to re-distribute the food from those who will work to produce the food, to those who will-not work. The government knows that True Workers are harder to control than the “Lazies” thus they intend to create a Gestapo like force to control every aspect of our lives, from Health Control, Education Control, Housing Control, Gun Control Work Control Transportation Control etc This bill like most every other bill the Obama Administration has passed, or wants to pass is not about your safety or my safety it is about, CONTROL,CONTROL CONTROL

The bare basics humans need to survive; Food, water, shelter, clothing. A job to be able to procure these things for oneself and family.

The cost of food is going up, as is gasoline. Obama looked straight into the camera when he said that energy prices will skyrocket.

The cost for cotton will also go up soon, probably very much so.

They’ve printed more money, which means that the money we make and have saved will have less purchasing power.

As the federal government gains more control over that which effects basic survival for the citizens we will find it harder to provide basic needs for ourselves. The power of “we the people” will become weaker as the power of the government over the individual will grow.

If this dynamic continues long enough it will not matter what rights are guaranteed us within our constitution. The government will have a more direct effect on our survival.

That’s the best scenario for a radical change in this country whether we like it or not.

Unmentioned is that most food borne illness originates in poorly cooked prepared fast food…restaurants.
That and fresh produce consumed without washing….
When I order a burger and the waiter/waitress inquires how I want it cooked I leave. Biology 101….hamburger MUST be cooked thoroughly.
It is impossible not to have salmanella throughout uncooked ground meat—-searing a steak works because the bacteria are only on the surface.

Actually there is a way to have your hamburger cooked the way you want it. About 10 or 15 years ago Kansas State University published a study in which they found a couple teaspoons of garlic powder per pound of hamburger reduced the levels of harmful bacteria by as much as 97 percent.

I suspect you assertion about fast food restaurants. My data is a few years old, at that time the leading source of food borne illness was, “undetermined.” My suspicion is it still is. Stomach flu, is actually, food poisoning. Also, drink beer at picknicks. While you’re at it keep the kids hands out of the food.

I think we need to reduce the speed limit on America’s streets to 5 MPH. Think of the countless lives it would save, especially those of children, minorities and women. And anyone that objects obviously doesn’t care about the lives of women, minorities and children.

Thank you for writing about this very important issue. I’m also in Kansas, I suppose you could call me a micro-farmer because I only earn a few hundred dollars a year from my free-range chicken’s eggs and the wild blackberries I sell at the local farmers’ market.

I understand that that $500,000 a year exemption for small farmers in the Tester Amendment to the bill is very much in danger of being removed – seems the big agribusinesses will not support the bill unless ALL growers are covered by it.

And that exemption only exempts us from a small portion of the bill – the requirement to provide a food safety plan to the FDA.

I have excerpted from Rady Ananda’s excellent explanation of the dangers of this bill here:
► It does not address the real causes of food safety issues stemming from the centralized, industrialized food supply chain;
► It ensures that international trade agreements have supremacy over local laws;
► It destroys States’ rights to define a culturally-appropriate legal platform under which food is produced and distributed;
► It transfers authority over food regulation enforcement from the FDA to the Department of Homeland Security, which brought us the liberty-killing, child-molesting TSA, which disastrously handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which has genocidally turned its eyes away from the ongoing BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico;
► It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – it eliminated small and medium-sized meat packers; and
► It significantly increases FDA’s power, an agency which has stated on public record that the American people have no “fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health” and “do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.

Even with the exemption, I will still be subject to inspections that by the FDA that I will have to pay for and fact product confiscation without cause or recourse and even armed raids – this has already happened to some small producers.

I will likely opt out of selling vegetables and eggs if this regulatory nightmare is forced on us. If I opt out, I guarantee you, thousands of people who sell food at Farmers’ Markets everywhere will opt out.

And just how do you think all this super-regulation of food will affect the price of food?

It is much better to rely on the food growers and manufactureres to police the saftey of their produce rather than having the government provide inspections that we all know is the first step to socialism. Better a few kids die and their parents sue the offending company than having jack booted inspectors stifle free enterprise.

Lorenzo,
1.The US has the best food safety record on earth.
2.Food Safety at the local level is already handled by local and State regulations.
3. This is another huge overreach by the Federal Government – it will affect those of us who don’t even cross state lines to sell our produce our or eggs.
4. Foreign countries won’t be forced to abide by the same laws – they will have a ‘voluntary’ program. Many of the food problems we have had are because of foreign food from Mexico, China, etc.
5. Do you really want Homeland Security making rules on what Americans can and cannot eat? Because this is what this bill does.
6. If people would do things like – check eggs to be sure they are not cracked and cook them completely, there would be far fewer illnesses associated with eggs – same with produce- you need to wash it. If it comes from Mexico, cook it – as they use the vegetable fields there as bathrooms. There is a certain amount of personal responsibility in preparing food that is being completely ignored by the ‘powers that be’.

In 2001, there were 411 people who died from electrocution. Maybe we should ban electricity! We can all burn wood, gas, or oil to keep warm, right?

Well, maybe not… 2,565 people died by home fires in 2009. We need to ban fire! I guess we can all just bundle up and keep warm that way.

But, 646 people died in 2002 because of extreme cold (hypothermia). President Canute can just write an Executive Order requiring that the temperature in the US never fall below 70F, then that will solve that problem, right… the government can fix anything, right, Lorenzo?

Underneath the laughably poll-tested ‘titles’ of their ‘legislation’ the true purpose is always always more power and control. They know that at some point the tipping point will be reached, and like the waters rushing over Niagra Falls, the drip drip loss of freedom will become a cascade into totalitarianism, which is, of course, their true goal.

Ever since 1776, there has been a relentless claw-back to the blessed days of absolute power.

The names change from Robespierre to Napolean to Bismark to Lenin to Hitler to Mao to Khomieni to Obama.

The ‘movements’ change from revolution to nationalism to royalism to socialism to facism to communism to Islam to liberalism to progressivism.

The rationales change from anti-capitalism to dialectic materialism to social justice to open borders to global warming to pan nationalism to economic justice to ‘fairness’ to hope.

The levers change from border conflicts to racism to nationalism to world wars to economic crisis to religious conflict to climate change to class warfare.

The dupes change from peasants to the proletariat to oppresed minorities to opressed races to aborigines to workers to youth to the disadvantaged to the middle class to the greedy to the envious to the naive.

But the ultimate goal is always always the same….abolute power for a tiny, arrogant, cynical, determined, ruthless, self-appointed aristocracy that will never again be subjected to the will of unwashed serfs.

I think the bill is worse than how the author portrays it. It is a power grab pure and simple. The intent is to spend a bunch of money and insert the federal government between small producers and the consumers. The organic farming industry is very worried about this bill. There is also a valid concern about the government regulating the sale of food supplements, i.e. CoQ10, Curcumin, etc, out of existence.
That the Democrats are pushing this is not unexpected, but there were 16 Republicans that voted for cloture on this Senate bill, S-510.

It seems that a lot of what Congress does is “feel good” – in other words, passing a law or regulation, no matter the cost and no matter the benefit, is good because they are doing something. Maybe we should have a law that forces members of Congress to meet only during 6 months, and for 6 months they are back home dealing with their constituents (yes, I know that after holidays and junkets and other non-work activities they only work 6 months are less, but if we make it formal then they may work even less).

Bacteria. If we take a hospital lab tech and ask him to swab soil, leaves, tomatoes, the truck, the boxes, the refrigerators, the salad bar, the human hands, the human mouth and the human used toilet, the dirtiest part of the human food chain is the human mouth. You can wash vegies but eating them with a bacteria laced mouth stiil means you can get sick.

In ER, the nastiest bites in terms of puss and infection are bites by humans. People get very few infections after dog bites.

I will say the farmer/producer will be hammered most by these regulations. The answer will be imported food which is nasty. They are more apt to use irigation water from sewage than we are.

This is yet another silly act. Why not instead enforce mandatory price reporting from farmers? Right now, they hide some of their production via voluntary price reporting to artificially increase prices..

Report all they produce, then let’s see free market competition rationalize the price.

Huh?
I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you know what you are talking about?
I am a very small farmer. I have no price reporting requirements. If I did, you would see that I sell my free-range chicken eggs at quite a loss.
Because there is no farmers market in the winter months, but I still have to feed and house my chickens.

The bill in question is only going to make the cost of producing food higher, with probably no change in regards to “food safety”.

It is a way to allow the Federal Govt. to control more of our lives, though.

…and the bill would simply add burdensome regulations and give federal bureaucrats TSA-like authority to do whatever they felt was necessary to “secure the food chain” with little recourse for consumers or producers.

If the Republicans are serious about stopping the expansion of government, the place to demonstrate it is here and the time is now. No amendments, or opposing the “current form” of this bill.

Oppose it for what it is, not because it isn’t tailored to suit your tastes.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”

The U.S. IMPORTS ALL CLASSIFICATIONS OF AGRUCULTURE products..raw and processed. What safety standards would you expect [your government] to demand of those imports?

We do need regulations setting universal safety standards but the question is by whom and how far reaching. I will submit that the regulatory process should be by the two components of the National Science Academy and their many cohorts of scientific research, coordinated through the USDA as a policing [advisor] to the many agri industries. The only role the federal government would have would be to legislate criminal and civil tort laws as applied to as a form of relief by any complaintant claiming or showing some injury through criminal or civil negligence.

The absolute cure for 99.999% of America’s problems with socialism creep and large governments overreaching private sector and diminished States Rights controls is a simple one!

Amend the Constitutions Article I, Section 8 (Commerce Clause) to read in total…..["To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations declared enemies of the Republic of the United States."].

I find it quite interesting (and definitely hypocritical) that leftists simulataneously vote for a fascist, such as Obama, while simultaneously demonizing “big agro” and promoting small family organic farming, even though 90% of food born illnesses traced back to the source are products from these small family farms, and 80% of those are organic farming. These people create the problems they want to “fix” because it is the only way to justify their existence.

I am not saying food safety is unimportant – but will gladly say that the process is highly inefficient and bloated with bureaucracy

In Talmudic law, if person one sends a second person to shoot a third person, the only one who can be prosecuted is the person who pulled the trigger. Person #2 simply should have known better. (This does not rule out conspiracy entirely, but the rule stands clearly, at least for discussion purposes)

If China is known to supply malamine containing baby formula, lead-tainted toys, and cadmium-filled stone-wear dishes, then it is our individual responsibility to avoid these products. Indeed, given China’s safety track record for so many of their products, we can no longer assume that they care about anything but the money they stand to make. They have lost credibility. Period!

So it should be for any entity, national or international, that does not take immediate and drastic action to correct threats to their customers.

It is simple logic that each of us is responsible for our own safety and the safety of those we love. In my case, my children hear immediately of any recall of children’s products that catches my eye.

From an existential viewpoint, we are always the #2 person. We should have known better. We can pressure our governments to take corrective measures, but we cannot depend upon them. This is the mistake of naive Socialists.

And yes, I do compare people who pull the trigger to murder someone on someone else’s orders to those who make mistakes (sometimes unavoidable) of catastrophic proportions. And yes, it is a very long discussion why this should be the case. However, in short, we are responsible for ourselves always and forever, no matter what. It is a rule we can use to overcome our own cognitive limitations (no matter our IQ), rather than being manipulated by others who understand human foibles.

little dick durbin, dingy harry and obama are in the process of ramming down “obamacare” for our food in s.510. this is nothing short of government run food in the guise of “food safty”. the statists have bought off the restaurants with an exemption (sound familiar) and the big food packers/producers could care less that small farmers, organic farmers, micro-brewers, small vinyards, even backyard gardeners and seed savers will be wiped out or regulated by this bill. would you like to have the right to grow your own food taken away?

tea partiers have been working against this bill since the get go but it passed cloture thanks to 14 rino/ruling class republican senators (the usual suspects, plus corker, alexander, et al.) plus ALL of the dems.

if you are a supporter of small farms and gardens, you’d better get on the phones this week like the rest of us.

The point is that the few safety issues we do have are not the result of inadequate oversight, but of producers so large as to render ANY oversight inadequate. Senator Colburn speaks of diminishing returns…he’s got that right. This will do nothing to address the problematic size of our biggest producers (the bigger the producer the bigger the problem) while hampering the smaller ones with needless regulation.

Colburn is f***ed when he says the system allows recourse through civil lawsuits, however. The whole time Republicans are talking “tort reform” out of the other side of their mouths.